An anti-police protest that started in downtown Seattle and went to Capitol Hill featured about 60 to 70 self-described anarchists, most looking to be in their 20s, and about 30 police officers on bicycles with an additional five on horse patrol.
“Wild in the Streets” it wasn’t.
The protest was advertised on the Internet and on leaflets as being part of an “International Day Against Police Brutality,” with Seattle highlighted as “what police violence looks like firsthand multiple times this past year” — singling out the fatal shooting of First Nations woodcarver John T. Williams by Seattle police Officer Ian Birk last summer.
The demonstrators, many dressed anarchist style in black jeans and black hoodies with black bandannas covering their faces, shouted slogans such as, “Cops, pigs, murderers!” and kicked over a garbage can or two.
The police, meanwhile, used their bikes to herd the anarchists out of the street and onto the sidewalk.
A couple of good shoves by the bicycle police was all it took for the anarchists to mind their manners and keep out of traffic.
The protest didn’t start out promisingly.
It had a scheduled start time of 6 p.m. at Westlake Park, but by then only half a dozen people had shown up.
A couple of black-clad young men were early arrivals, but they, like others who eventually arrived, wouldn’t talk to a couple of reporters at the scene.
Later, a young woman, who had a metal pin through the bridge of her nose, was handing out little cardboard cards that read, handwritten in pink, “I am an anarchist & I care about you!” The card included a peace sign.
“A lot of people see anarchists as angry and aggressive people,” she said. “That’s definitely not true. We’re not about violence.”
She was with a young man who was complaining that wearing a bandanna covering his face interfered with drinking his Mountain Dew.
By 6:30 p.m. the group of anarchists and supporters had grown to 70.
Herded by the police, they went around the block. As happens in demonstrations, a couple of individuals who seem to relish attention did a lot of shouting.
Then the protesters made their way east, all the way to the Seattle police precinct near 12th Avenue and East Pine Street, which had been blocked off.
The anarchists stood by the edge of Cal Anderson Park that’s near the precinct station, waving black flags and signs with messages like, “What we want begins with a no.”
They shouted slogans such as, “There ain’t no power like the power of the people, because the power of the people don’t stop.”
There was some more shouting, the cops stood impassively blocking the protesters from going into the street, and then eventually the anarchists straggled off.
Police spokesman Mark Jamieson said that as of 9 p.m., there had been no reports of arrests.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2014505980_anarchists16m.html
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